Michael Wright
Emeritus Professor
Psychology
Brunel University
Uxbridge, UB8 3PH
United Kingdom
Biography
Qualifications
- BA Natural Sciences (Psychology), Cambridge University
- MA Cambridge University
- PhD in Visual Neurophysiology, Cambridge University
- Associate Fellow, British Psychological Society (AFBPsS)
- Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol)
Personal Biography
I obtained a first degree in Natural Sciences (Psychology) and a PhD in visual neurophysiology from Cambridge University. I was postdoctoral fellow at the Royal College of Surgeons and at St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School and Cambridge University, before joining Brunel. I set up Brunel’s Vision and EEG Labs (with funding from MRC, EPSRC, Wellcome) and I am a founder member of Brunel’s MRI scanner partnership (SRIF funded). I have published extensively on single-cell neurophysiology of vision (1969 – 1976), visual psychophysics, ERP and neural modelling of visual motion and spatial vision (1976 - 2000), vision and attention (since 2000) and fMRI and visual expertise in sport (since 2007). At Brunel University I was Head of Psychology (1989 - 2000), Head of the Department of Human Sciences (2000 - 2003), Deputy Head of School (Undergraduate) (2003 - 2005), and Director of Research Programmes (PGR) (2005 - 2010).Research
Research Overview
I am currently investigating how deceptive moves in football bias spatial attention, using fMRI, EEG and behavioural methods. A collaborative study with Prof. Fernand Gobet on ERP mechanisms of chess expertise is close to completion. Other work in progress concerns EEG and ERP analysis of dynamic facial expressions.
Co-director, Centre for Cognition and Neuroimaging
Current Projects
Deceptive moves and spatial attention in football
2010 -
Neural mechanisms of expertise in chess
2007 -
Neuroimaging of dynamic facial expressions
2008 -
Methods in Neuroimaging
Book contract with co-authors Dr Adrian Williams, Dr Alex Nowicky
Recently Completed Projects
Research Grants Council (Hong Kong)
The relationship between expert perception, task constraints and selective information pick-up in ball sports
HK$ 977,810
2007 - 2010
PI Prof B Abernethy (HKU), CIs Prof M J Wright (Brunel), Dr R Jackson (Brunel)
PhD Supervision
Katherine Macaulay: The influence of self-reported ethnicity and mood on elicited emotion and brain reactivity to happy and sad social films; PhD Awarded July 2012
Fatma Alnzawi: Cultural factors influencing content of delusions among schizophrenic patients in Saudi Arabia; Submitted July 2012
Aisha Abuhajar: Cultural values, social support and self-esteem as predictors of depression in Libya and the UK; Submitted July 2012
Adel Alyami:The role of cultural values, attitudes of ethnic identity in acculturation of Saudi students in the UK; Expected date of submission, September 2014
Teaching
Undergraduate Programmes
- BSc Psychology
Module contributor
- Applied Psychology
- Psychology Dissertation
Postgraduate Programmes
- MSc Functional Neuroimaging
Module contributor
- Principles of Neuroimaging
External Activity
- Member of the Undergraduate Education Committee of the British Psychological Society
- External Examiner (BSc Psychology) Bangor University (2008-2012)
- External Examiner (BSc Psychology) Stirling University (2008-2012)
- External Examiner (SD226 Biological Psychology) Open University (2010-2014)
- Management Committee, Combined Universities Brain Imaging Centre
- European Brain and Behaviour Society
- Applied Vision Association
- British Association for Cognitive Neuroscience
Publications
Publications
Journal Papers
(2013) Bishop, D., Wright, MJ., Jackson, RC. and Abernethy, B., Neural Bases for Anticipation Skill in Soccer: An fMRI Study, Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology
(2011) Wright, MJ., Bishop, DT., Jackson, RC. and Abernethy, B., Cortical fMRI activation to opponents' body kinematics in sport-related anticipation: expert-novice differences with normal and point-light video., Neurosci Lett 500 (3) : 216- 221 Download publication
(2010) Wright, MJ., Bishop, DT., Jackson, RC. and Abernethy, B., Functional MRI reveals expert-novice differences during sport-related anticipation, NeuroReport 21 (2) : 94- 98
(2010) Anagnostaki, L., Wright, MJ. and Bourchier-Sutton, AJ., The semantics of secrecy: Young children's classification of secret content, Journal of Genetic Psychology 171 (4) : 279- 299
(2009) Williams, AL. and Wright, MJ., Static representations of speed and their neural correlates in human area MT/V5, Neuroreport 20 (16) : 1466- 1470
(2007) Wright, MJ. and Jackson, RC., Brain regions concerned with perceptual skills in tennis: An fMRI study, International Journal of Psychophysiology 63 (2) : 214- 220 Download publication
(2005) Tambouratzis, T. and Wright, MJ., Aspect graphs for three-dimensional object recognition machine vision systems, International Journal of Intelligent Systems 20 (1) : 47- 72
(2005) Wright, MJ., Saliency predicts change detection in pictures of natural scenes, Spatial Vision 18 (4) : 431- 430
(2004) Lakha, L. and Wright, MJ., Capacity limitations of visual memory in two-interval comparison of Gabor arrays, Vision Research 44 (14) : 1707- 1716 Download publication
(2004) Wright, M. and Ledgeway, T., Interaction between luminance gratings and disparity gratings, Spatial Vision 17 (1-2) : 51- 74
(2003) Green, AJK. and Wright, MJ., Reduction of task-relevant information in skill acquisition, European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 15 (2) : 267- 290
(2002) Wright, MJ., Alston, L. and Popple, AV., Set-size effects for spatial frequency change and discrimination in multiple targets, Spatial Vision 15 (2) : 157- 170
(2000) Wright, M., Green, A. and Baker, S., Limitations for change detection in multiple Gabor targets, Visual Cognition 7 (1-3) : 237- 252 Download publication
(1999) Wright, MJ. and Gurney, KN., Visual discrimination of direction changes based upon two types of angular motion, Vision Research 39 (11) : 1927- 1941
(1997) Wright, MJ. and Gurney, KN., Coherence and motion transparency in rigid and nonrigid plaids, Perception 26 (5) : 553- 567
(1996) Gurney, K. and Wright, MJ., A biologically plausible model of early visual motion processing 1: theory and implementation, Biological Cybernetics 74 (4) : 339- 348
(1996) Gurney, K. and Wright, MJ., A biologically plausible model of early visual motion processing 2: psychophysical application, Biological Cybernetics 74 (4) : 349- 358
(1996) Gurney, KN. and Wright, MJ., A model for the spatial integration and differentiation of velocity signals, Vision Research 36 (18) : 2939- 2955
(1996) Wright, MJ., Coherence, transparency, capture and segmentation in simple two-component stimuli, PERCEPTION 25 86- 86 Download publication
(1996) Gurney, K. and Wright, MJ., Rotation and radial motion thresholds support a two-stage model of differential-motion analysis, Perception 25 (1) : 5- 26
(1995) Wright, MJ. and Gurney, KN., The discrimination of dynamic orientation changes in gratings, Perception 24 (6) : 665- 679
(1993) Tambouratis, T. and Wright, MJ., The relative effectiveness of serial and parallel viewing of line drawings depicting possible and impossible objects, Perception 22 (11) : 1271- 1285
(1992) Gurney, KN. and Wright, MJ., A self-organising neural network model of image velocity encoding, Biological Cybernetics 68 (2) : 173- 181
(1992) Wright, MJ. and Gurney, KN., Coherence, transparency and the discrimination of rigid and nonrigid motion (Abstract), Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science 33 (4) : 1050-
(1992) Wright, MJ. and Gurney, KN., Dependence of stereomotion on the orientation of spatial-frequency components, Opthalmic and Physiological Optics 12 (2) : 264- 268
(1992) Wright, MJ. and Gurney, KN., Lower threshold of motion for one and two dimensional patterns in central and peripheral vision, Vision Research 32 (1) : 121- 134
(1987) Wright, MJ., Spatiotemporal properties of grating motion detection in the center and the periphery of the visual field, Journal of the Optical Society of America A 4 (8) : 1627- 1633
(1986) Wright, MJ., Apparent velocity of motion aftereffects in central and peripheral vision, Perception 15 (5) : 603- 612
(1986) Johnston, A. and Wright, MJ., Matching velocity in central and peripheral vision, Vision Research 26 (7) : 1099- 1109
(1985) Wright, MJ. and Johnston, A., Invariant tuning of motion aftereffect, Vision Research 25 (12) : 1947- 1955
(1985) Johnston, A. and Wright, MJ., Lower thresholds of motion for gratings as a function of eccentricity and contrast, Vision Research 25 (2) : 179- 185
(1985) Wright, MJ. and Johnston, A., The relationship of displacement thresholds for oscillating gratings to cortical magnification, spatiotemporal frequency and contrast, Vision Research 25 (2) : 187- 193
(1983) Wright, MJ. and Johnston, A., Spatiotemporal contrast sensitivity and visual field locus, Vision Research 23 (10) : 983- 989
(1983) Johnston, A. and Wright, MJ., Visual motion and cortical velocity, Nature 304 (5925) : 436- 438
(1982) Wright, MJ., Contrast sensitivity and adaptation as a function of grating length, Vision Research 22 (1) : 139- 149
(1982) Wright, MJ. and Johnston, A., The effects of contrast and length of gratings on the visual evoked potential, Vision Research 22 (11) : 1389- 1399
Book Chapters
(1995) Wright, MJ. and Gurney, KN., From spatiotemporal tuning to velocity analysis. In: Robbins, JG., Djamgoz, MBA. and Taylor, A. eds. Basic and Clinical Perspectives in Vision Research : A Celebration of the Career of Hisako Ikeda. 161- 175
